Automate

Microsoft’s Power Automate is a great tool to connect SharePoint Lists, Outlook, Forms, and other apps to keep data consistent, standardized, and repeatable.

I’ve been using Power Automate for a few years now to help my coworkers get out of their Outlook inbox or PowerPoint slides as a starting point for work. Granted, much of the Flows I’ve built are automated emails, but it’s a start.

One Flow I built connects a questionnaire in Microsoft Forms to a Planner, essentially turning a multiple page Word document into a form and then a set of action steps for specific teams. Much more useful than sending around a word document through email. This took a few days of coding to get the right dynamic content correct.

My latest project creates a custom email by creating three HTML tables from a SharePoint List with three filters. This is essentially creating a weekly email to remind coworkers of upcoming meetings and tasks to review, without giving them access to the full list and having one source of data for staff officer reviews and the custom email. This took weeks of coding and several failed attempts, so don’t be discouraged if your own Flow doesn’t work on the first try. Remember to convert from UTC.